Visualization Update June 18, 2009 Kelly Gaither, GIG Area Director DV

Background 26% of 2008 user survey respondents use TG resources for interactive visualization, steering, and data analysis. Visualization activities are coordinated through the Visualization working group (led by Mike Papka - ANL, and Kelly Gaither – TACC and coordinated by Joe Insley, ANL). –Over the last year, the group has met the first Tuesday of every month. Work over the last year has focused on: –Reducing barriers to entry and improving usability through TG Visualization Gateway and TGUP visualization portlets. –Leveraging software and activities developed at TG RPs.

Software Activities TeraGrid Visualization Gateway – community access via dynamic accounts is in final testing and will be deployed next quarter. Additionally, a volume rendering portlet has been added. Paraview is currently the method for visualization, but VisIt is being considered as well. (Joe Insley, Mike Papka – ANL contact) EnVision is a web based interface that simplifies basic visualization capabilities (isosurfaces, particle traces, cutting planes, etc.). Has been deployed and is available for public use. (Greg P. Johnson, Kelly Gaither – TACC contact) ORNL is working with Utah to integrate VisTrails into VisIt (Sean Ahern – ORNL contact)

Software Activities New version of Star Splatter viewer for looking at SPH data (Joel Welling – PSC contact). Purdue TeraDRE - supports Maya, Blender, POVray, and Gelato and allows users to render 3D animations using a cluster of over 4000 machines (Dave Braun – Purdue contact). IU Render Portal – Condor render portal that uses available student systems as a distributed render cluster (Mike Boyles – IU Contact). VAPOR – Visualization and analysis platform for Ocean, Atmosphere and Solar research (John Clyne – NCAR contact).

TG 09 There will be a half day visualization tutorial at TG 09 that currently has approximately 35 attendees – participation from ANL, TACC and NCAR. The “Visualization Gallery” will happen again this year: –12 visualization submissions –Will be displayed on Tuesday night with the reception

Current Efforts: Visualization working group is working on a white paper to lay a foundation for the future directions for petascale visualization and data analysis. –The group meets once a week on Wednesdays at 3pm –Current material is on the wiki at isualization#Petascale_Visualization_and_Data_Analysis_W hite_Paper isualization#Petascale_Visualization_and_Data_Analysis_W hite_Paper –We will distribute the first version of the white paper at the science advisory board for comment from the community –Second version will be distributed to the TG forum for the Sept quarterly meeting

Future Efforts: NSF has recommended that two resources be funded for the XD Vis program –First is a large shared memory machine that will primarily focus on large scale data analysis and data mining with visualization capabilities –Second is a large distributed memory machine that will primarily focus on large scale remote interactive visualization and will provide data mining and data analysis capabilities

For Questions: Kelly Gaither at or to get the entire vis working group, viz-